Conversations left open-ended don’t rise to the level of an offer

The case out of New Jersey, Kristine Deer, Inc. v. Booth, No. C-29-16 (behind paywall), involved a luxury active wear company, K-DEER, for which the defendant, Booth, worked. Booth had several conversations over the course of her employment with K-DEER’s sole shareholder, Kristine Deer, about Booth receiving possible equity interest in the company. However, every one of those conversations was fairly vague. Deer seemed to always finish the conversations with some kind of demurral: that she had to “think about” it more, or that she wasn’t “ready to have the conversation.” Eventually, Booth resigned with an e-mail that read “If you are not willing to pursue an active dialog about ownership I am not interested in working at K-DEER.”

The parties are now involved in litigation, which included, among other things, Booth’s counterclaim for breach of contract. She alleged that “Deer led [her] to believe she was a partner and had a right to equity in K-DEER,” because she “did not explicitly deny her requests for equity” and called her a “partner” at times. However, the court quoted at length from Booth’s deposition, where she admitted that Deer did not offer her any equity and that, in fact, her unwillingness to do so was why she resigned. Under these circumstances, it was impossible to find an offer from Deer to Booth. There was no expression of commitment on Deer’s part. In fact, all of Deer’s statements seemed to evince the opposite. So the court found no contract existed between the parties.